


The Valley of Bones

by FettsOnTop (GTFF)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Doomed Relationship, F/M, Family History, Sharing a Bed, Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2020, Treat, past Jango/Shmi, spoilers for the mandalorian s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTFF/pseuds/FettsOnTop
Summary: After finding a mysterious object, Leia seeks out a certain ex-bounty hunter and discovers a surprising connection.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Leia Organa, Jango Fett/Shmi Skywalker
Comments: 16
Kudos: 86
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	The Valley of Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiend/gifts).



Nothing. These were the coordinates, but all she could see were rocks and sand. Leia sighed and lowered her macrobinoculars. The locals warned her it was remote, almost a day’s speeder ride from any of the settlements at the edge of Tatooine’s wastelands. They also tried to talk her out of going alone. 

"If the Dune Sea doesn't kill you the sandpeople will."

A shiver ran down Leia’s back. They weren’t wrong about the danger, but it was a risk she had to take. She put the binoculars back in her rucksack and hoisted it onto her back. Her eyes shut, her mind searching for direction. Somewhere out here was a man with an answer to a question. She could feel it. And speaking of feelings…

She spun around, drawing her blaster from her belt. The rifle she’d left in the speeder was now aimed at her head. The man holding it wore ragged desert attire, a Tusken gaffi stick lashed to his broad back. His face was scarred and he had no hair or eyebrows. 

“Boba Fett?”

“Your highness.”

The voice was the same, even if it wasn’t filtered by his helmet. Just hearing it was enough to bring back the damp, unpleasant smell of Jabba’s palace. The grinding music and the clanking of chains. 

Those memories were supposed to be long buried in the gut of a sarlacc. The one that Boba Fett had somehow crawled out of. 

Leia kept her blaster level. “I'm here to talk. Put the rifle down."

The barrel of the rifle jerked to the left, just enough that she would have felt the heat from the blaster bolt on her neck when he pulled the trigger. But there was no bolt.

Fett raised the rifle and took a second look at the uncharged weapon. “Bait. Clever.”

“I’m not here to fight,” she said, lowering her blaster. “I need your help.”

“Head north from here. There’s a settlement full of people who will help you.” He dropped the rifle and picked up a staff leaning against the speeder. 

“I need _your_ help,” Leia called after him as he walked away. “I wouldn’t be here if anyone else could do it.” He started up a rocky incline, and after an exasperated sigh Leia holstered her blaster and followed him. 

“I’m retired.” He said without looking back. 

“This is more of a consultation. And I’m willing to pay you handsomely for your time.”

“Not much use for credits out here.” He kept going, using his staff for stability. Leia picked her way around jagged rocks, pushing herself to keep up with him. She was winded by the time she reached the top of the ridge.

A sandswept valley lay below them, a natural corridor for one of the largest exhibits of skeletal remains she had ever seen in her life. The sun-bleached bones of countless creatures, large and small, painstakingly presented on either side of a narrow path. 

She could identify some of them. Bantha, dewback and…

“Is...is that a rancor?”

“Yup.” Fett was clearly enjoying her reaction. The valley of bones stretched on so long that she couldn’t even tell where it ended. 

“ _Why_?”

He shrugged. “I like collecting things. I always have.”

“It’s...very impressive.”

“Thank you.” He turned to the right and started down the slope. He gave no indication that she should follow, but he also said nothing to discourage her. She had come all this way. Why turn back now?

Tatooine’s twin suns dipped lower in the sky and the air began to cool. It was on the tip of Leia’s tongue to ask where they were going when Fett took a sharp right turn and she saw the house tucked beneath a sheer rock face. 

If it wasn’t for the moisture vaporizers she might never have seen it at all. Fett paused about four paces from the door and motioned for her to stop. He took a small device from his belt and the ground around the house shimmered for an instant. A trip field. Clearly he didn’t want unexpected visitors.

There was a more rudimentary snare above the door which he also disarmed. Then he stood aside and motioned for her to enter. It was a single room with a simple bed and a cooking hearth. Most of his cooking implements were Tusken in design, with utensils made from the bones of womp rats and lizards. 

Leia saw what looked like a dart laying on the bed, fashioned from a bit of sharpened bone and feathers. It didn’t take her long to spot the target hanging on the opposite wall. An old bounty posting flickered on a bit of smooth hide stretched over a frame. 

_Wanted by his excellency Jabba the Hutt: Han Solo. Dead or alive._

There were several bone darts nearly obscuring her ex-husband’s face. Leia picked up the dart on the bed and aimed a little lower. The dart found its mark with a sure _thud_ , and she turned back to Fett. If his scarred face still had eyebrows, they would be halfway to the hair that he also didn't have. 

“Nice place,” Leia said. “Shall we get down to business?”

“Have a drink first.” He took two metal cups from a shelf above the hearth. “Have you ever had _arvaah_?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

He filled one cup with water from a vaporizer jug and the other with a dark liquid from a leather skein hanging on the wall. Then he held out both cups. “Drink the water first, then the _arvaah_. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Leia accepted the water gratefully and the _arvaah_ with a little more hesitation. “Did you make this?”

“No. I give the Tuskens the bones I don’t need and they keep me well supplied.” He filled a cup with _arvaah_ for himself, completely disregarding his own warning about water before he tossed it back. 

The water was tepid but refreshing. The _arvaah_ was dark and almost syrup-like in texture, but it had a pleasant warmth and tang from whatever was fermented to make it. Leia decided she would rather not know the details. “Thank you, she said, returning the cups to him. 

“Have a seat.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and opened her rucksack. “I need information about an item that belonged to my grandmother. I don’t know why she had it or what it means.” Her hand stilled in the bag as a thought occurred to her. “Do you...get much news out here?”

“I know the Emperor was defeated. And I also know that you can’t destroy a galactic empire by killing one old man.”

“This news is more personal.” It still felt strange to say it out loud. “Luke Skywalker is my twin brother. Our biological father was...Darth Vader.”

Fett looked at her in silence for a second or more before he reached for the _arvaah_ skein. “You want another one?”

“Sure.” She was starting to feel the alcohol now, but it wasn’t overwhelming. “Before he became Darth Vader he went by the name Anakin Skywalker. According to the records I’ve found, he and his mother were enslaved and were brought to Tatooine by one of the hutts.”

She finished her second cup of _arvaah_ and reached into the bag again. “His mother lived on Tatooine for many years and was buried at the farm where Luke grew up. The home was destroyed, but we went there recently to see if we could find anything. And I found this.” She pulled out a small box, a holocase. “It was hidden in the wall by her workbench.”

Leia flipped open the lid and the projection flickered to life. A dark-haired man in silver Mandalorian armor, his helmet under one arm. His other arm was around a little boy with the same coloring who looked to be five or six years old. Leia had looked at it a hundred times or more, but with Fett across from her the reason that he was the one who could identify it became even clearer. 

The resemblance was striking. So was the look of absolute shock on his face. 

“Where,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Did you get that?”

“I just told you. My grandmother-”

“Shmi was your grandmother.”

The ease with which her name rolled off his tongue left Leia feeling a little shocked herself. “You knew her.”

He started to reach for the _arvaah_ skein again, but then his hand changed direction. “Can I see that?” He handled the small case as if it were a priceless treasure, turning it over in his hands. His finger swiped across the bottom of the case, feeling for something Leia couldn’t see. Suddenly the projection vanished, replaced by a blinking red light. “It’s a homing beacon,” Fett said, his voice still strained. “In case she ever needed his help.”

“Whose help?”

“My dad. Jango Fett.” His finger moved again and the blinking stopped. The projection flickered back to life. “That’s him. And the child is me. I haven’t seen this in...thirty years, at least.” His brow furrowed. “I never knew her last name. We used to visit her in Mos Espa, her owner had a scrapyard there.” He said the word ‘owner’ with a curled lip. “Not a hutt. Watto. A toydarian.”

“They must have been sold off the record.”

“She used to make these sweet cakes when we visited. Said she used to make them for...her son. She called him ‘Ani.’” He rubbed the side of his face absently. “My dad said he was sold away from her when he was young.”

“...I was told she released custody of him to the Jedi Order.”

Fett shrugged. “To him it would have been the same thing.”

“And how did he know Shmi?”

“I don’t know how they met. She had a knack for memory drives, I remember a few times he brought her something to work on." His finger traced the edges of the holocase. "He wouldn't have given her this if there wasn't more."

"You think they might have been romantically involved?"

"Sometimes her droid would take me to the flats to watch the podracers practice. My dad always stayed behind with Shmi.”

“Oh.” 

“I know he wanted to buy her freedom, but she was afraid her son wouldn’t be able to find her if she left. At some point we stopped going to visit her. My dad wouldn’t talk about it."

“According to Luke a local farmer freed her and married her. He had a son about Anakin’s age."

“That makes sense.” Fett carefully closed the holocase before he handed it back to her. “There’s nothing more I can tell you. He cared about her. But he couldn’t stay with her."

“And she couldn’t leave.” Leia dropped the holocase back in her rucksack, trying not to look at the makeshift dartboard on the wall. “Irreconcilable differences."

“You want another drink?”

“Yes, but I should get back to my speeder.” She stood, already regretting drinking as much as she had. She would be lucky not to break her neck on the rocks. 

“You think you can find your way back? Look.” He opened the door just enough to show her that night had settled into the valley.

It was a fair question. One wrong turn and she could be lost forever in the sands. “Are you inviting me to stay the night?”

“I don’t get a lot of company,” Fett said as he refilled their cups. “You can have the bed and I’ll show the way back to your speeder at first light.”

Leia took the cup from him. “We never discussed your payment. If credits are no use to you I can send supplies or-”

“You know what I want.” His eyes held hers over the rim of his cup before he drained it. Leia followed suit before she sat on the bed again. The _arvaah_ made her skin feel warm and flushed, as if she was sitting in front of fire. She reached into her rucksack for the holocase and tossed it to Fett.

He caught it one-handed and set down his cup to open it. There was something different about the way that he looked at the projection now that it was his. He closed the lid and set it carefully on a shelf beside the hearth. “I thought it was going to be harder to get that."

“I have a son,” she said, as if that explained it. Maybe it did, because he had no follow-up questions. Leia sighed and fell back onto the bed as the warmth of the _arvaah_ spread through her. “So you like living out here by yourself? Being completely alone?”

“I was alone before I came here.”

Leia looked up at the ceiling above her, meager but sufficient shelter from the harsh environment. “I hate being alone.” She turned her head toward Fett and patted the bed. “There’s room, if you would like to join me."

He didn’t say anything. He unhooked his cloak and hung it on a hook beside the door. Leia closed her eyes, her pulse picking up as she listened to the sound of him removing his belt and boots. The mattress dipped as he stretched out beside her.

When she opened her eyes he was right there, laying on his side, solid warmth and hooded brown eyes. She turned toward him and put her hand over his, guiding it up to her face. His palm cupped her cheek and his throat convulsed visibly as his thumb traced a line down her face from the side of her nose to the corner of her mouth. 

She mirrored the caress, her hand spread over his cheek, her fingers brushing over scarred flesh. When he kissed her it tasted like _arvaah_ , and she pressed closer, her hand dropping to his chest. The heart she would have once sworn was nonexistent beat insistently under her palm. 

“Are you alone now?” He asked, his breath warm and quick.

“No,” she said, and pulled his head down to kiss him again.   
  



End file.
